Examples of L.A. landmarks, plans to transform them and efforts at preservation of the structures.
Ambassador Hotel
Status Check: Being turned into a high school.
Designed by architect Myron Hunt also responsible for Occidental College, the Rose Bowl and the Pasadena Public Library the 500-room Ambassador Hotel opened on Wilshire Boulevard in 1921. The hotel’s nightclub, the Cocoanut Grove, attracted Hollywood’s brightest stars, including Bing Crosby, Barbra Strei-sand and Frank Sinatra. The hotel hosted the third Academy Awards, where the golden Oscar statuette was unveiled. But the Ambassador became notorious as the site where Senator Robert Kennedy was shot in 1968 by Sirhan Sirhan in the pantry off the Embassy Ballroom.
The hotel was closed in 1989. The Schine Family sold the Ambassador in 1990 to a partnership that included Donald Trump, who wanted to build a skyscraper on the site. Then the Los Angeles Unified School District bought the Ambassador in 2001 and won approval to construct a school there while retaining a few historic elements. The Cocoanut Grove will become an auditorium, and sections of the pantry where Kennedy was assassinated are slated for storage. Demolition began last year.
Perino’s
Status Check:
Becoming apartments available for lease next year.
Alexander Perino, a restaurateur who arrived in Hollywood via Italy in 1925 to wait tables at some of L.A.’s top eateries, opened Perino’s restaurant in 1932 on Wilshire Boulevard. Several years later, he moved Perino’s two blocks to a grocery market stylishly revamped by architect Paul Williams. In 1954, a fire ravished the inside of the restaurant, and Perino rebuilt it incorporating such accents as pink linen table cloths and pink roses on table tops to match the pink exterior.
Hollywood’s finest were Perino’s regulars. Bette Davis had a standing reservation, Frank Sinatra tickled the ivories and Cole Porter reportedly wrote a song on the flipside of a menu. Perino sold the restaurant in 1969 and attempts to rekindle its old glamour failed. With the exception of the occasional party and film crew, Perino’s closed to the public in 1986.
Carey & Kutay Development Group bought Perino’s in 2002 for $4 million. Last year, work started on an estimated $24 million, 47-unit apartment complex. Killefer Flammang Architects has designed the apartment building in a Spanish Colonial Baroque style, although Perino’s original sheet-metal awning, porte cochere and neon sign will remain as a tribute to the look of times gone by.
Brown Derby
Status Check:
Last remaining Brown Derby building saved after a campaign by preservationists.
According to one version of the story of how the Brown Derby came to be, screenwriter Wilson Mizner chided Herbert Somborn, the second of silent film star Gloria Swanson’s six husbands, “if you know anything about food, you can sell it out of a hat.”
Taking the dig seriously, Somborn, with friend and restaurateur Robert Cobb, in 1926 opened the first of a handful of Brown Derby restaurants on Wilshire Boulevard in what is now Koreatown. A decade later, the Brown Derby moved into a larger hat-shaped venue less than a block away. Brown Derby restaurants were also in Beverly Hills, Hollywood and Los Feliz.
The Los Feliz restaurant was opened in 1941 and is the only one still standing. Cobb famously created the Cobb salad at the Brown Derby in 1937 by putting together remnants from the fridge. During the Brown Derby’s heyday, many a celebrity heeded the restaurant’s call, “Eat at the hat.”
Will Rogers, Mary Pickford, Lucille Ball and Rudolph Valentino were among those who dined at the restaurant. The original Brown Derby closed in 1980, and remnants now sit at a mini-mall.
The Brown Derby in Los Feliz later became Michael’s and is currently the home of the Derby nightclub and Louise’s Trattoria. Adler Realty Investments Inc. had proposed to construct condos at the site, but the City Council voted in May to designate the building a historic landmark.
Palladium
Status Check:
At risk for a large development that could include housing, retail and a hotel.
Designed by Los Angeles architect Gordon Kaufman on the former site of Paramount studio, the Palladium was a pet project of movie producer Maurice Cohen. He wanted Angelenos to flock to the concert venue for top music performances. Opened on Halloween in 1940, the Palladium became host to some of the greatest acts of its time. Thousands packed the house to listen to Tommy Dorsey, Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw, Les Brown, Harry James and Stan Kenton as World War II was engulfing Europe.
In 1961, the Palladium became the base of operations for Lawrence Welk’s television show, and the venue hosted the Academy Awards sporadically between 1954 through 1974. Bands such as the Grateful Dead, the Rolling Stones, the Police and the Red Hot Chili Peppers have played there. Combined Properties Inc. of Beverly Hills is in escrow to purchase the Hollywood Palladium for around $65 million from its current owners Palladium Investors Ltd. Developers have considered razing it to make way for housing, restaurants and retail.
To avoid opposition, there’s pressure to find a compromise that will allow development on the parking lot, while retaining the Palladium building.
Carroll Avenue Victorians
Status Check:
Historic preservation measures safeguard the homes from being radically changed or destroyed.
Carroll Avenue features a concentration of Victorian homes in Angelino Heights, east of Echo Park Lake and north of the Hollywood (101) Freeway. The area was originally developed in the 1880s when William Stilson and Everett Hall proposed a subdivision in the hopes of attracting wealthy buyers to the enclave, one of Los Angeles’ first suburbs. A nearby cable car line and sweeping views of downtown were selling points. More than a dozen Angelino Heights homes have received Los Angeles cultural historic monument protection, and the 1300 block of Carroll Avenue is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Riding a wave of increased interest in restoring historic buildings and fearing decay of neighborhood assets, residents pushed for institution of a Historic Preservation Overlay Zone to encourage maintenance of all the old homes. In 1983, Angelino Heights was the first area in the city to win HPOZ approval. Community members have been vocal about retaining the area’s historic character, even successfully rallying against a developer’s proposal to build condominiums. Walking tours of Angelino Heights are held regularly.
Gregory Ain Tract
Status Check:
A historic preservation overlay zone protects Modernist homes from exterior alterations not consistent with the neighborhood’s character.
Architect Gregory Ain, a Boyle Heights-born Modernist in the generation following Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Neutra and Rudolf Schindler, designed 52 houses in Mar Vista with Joseph Johnson and Alfred Day. The homes, part of the first postwar housing tract, were planned in 1947 as the initial phase of a large development that was to include at least 100 residences on 60 acres. The development was never fully completed. The minimalist, single-story family homes that ended up being built were meant to bring Modernism to masses. They had versatile floor plans, with sliding walls, and generous windows so sunlight would pour into the rooms. In 1948, they were advertised in the Los Angeles Times as “Modernique Homes” with “dining facilities easily converted for a bar, buffet or formal serving” and “twice as much built-in closet, wardrobe and drawer space as the average home.” But Modernism apparently wasn’t that appealing, and the homes were slow to sell. The homes now sell at a premium, and are restored by residents who show a commitment to their historic origins. The Gregory Ain Tract became the first group of Modernist buildings in Los Angeles to receive historic preservation overlay zone protection, limiting changes to home exteriors.
